The World's Turning

There is always a precious day that determines the next chapter of someone’s life. There is always a chance to learn, even without realizing it. There are also people who involved in that process, people who play an important part of the story.

As a human being, I do feel the same way. I did experience many things that somehow gave me betterment in the way I think or act. And there were also some people whom I respect so much, some people who accompanied me to grow myself up and helped me through hard times.

But the world’s turning. There will never be something so eternal that doesn’t change, except Al-Qur’an. I knew perfectly well that my happiness wouldn’t last forever, that someday they would leave me alone again, and some other people might fill their position, or vice versa—some other people would replace my position.

And now that ‘someday’ finally arrives.

Do you know how it feels to ‘share’ your loved ones with the other people? Do you know how it feels to lose sweet moments in your life, when suddenly memories become an intoxicating and irritating happiness? Have you ever been forced by nature to accept it all, because you can’t do any effort that will keep the situation stagnant, constant, as happy as you want it to be?

It is indeed a part of growing up---being a big hearted and sportive girl. Haven’t I been taught by those incredible people to grow up? Haven’t I been taught not to cry? Haven’t I gone through bloodshed dramas and tears of joy and tears of frustration? Why does it take me so hard to let them go and deal with their own life?

Seeing the photographs of me and them, seeing those smiles...remembering how I was happy yet angry back then, seeing only one or two of them now enjoying their new challenge to make some kids grow up like me and my best buddy, seeing them now being a rival for my organization that, in the past, were helped by them (this also applies to a consequence: that they are not as ‘kind and generous’ and supportive to my juniors like they did to me), seeing them now ‘sharing’ with the other people that were never be in my life before—it just HURTS.

Doesn’t it show you, readers, that I’m still a little kid after all they’ve taught to me?

It’s not only about that ‘one or two of them’, but almost everything has changed. The atmosphere is not the same again, whenever I come to a big white building inside a filled-with-green-trees campus. The friendly atmosphere now changes into conversations that I don’t understand, new faces, and the feeling of an outsider inside of me. I wanna come and enjoy everything I could enjoy back then, I wanna lose all the stress in my academic life when I enter that building and play around with them—yet everything doesn’t go as what I expect. The only choice left is not to visit them anymore, because visiting them makes me sad. The only choice left is to bury everything that I’ve treasured for so long, every lesson that makes me like what I am right now. The only choice is befriend my new chapter of life: preparing for the exams ahead: national examination, tests to enter the dreamed institute, try-outs and so on. An uncomfortable choice but I have to take it.

Now there’s this question: Why do I write this?

One year ago, it was the first time I met some of them. November 9^th, 2007. It’s still fresh in my mind: it was Friday, and me and my best buddy were tired after school but had to come to that place because our coach told us to. There he was, a skinny man with a yellow bag. Wasn’t it funny, two high school girls wrapped in their high school batik uniform, entering the filled-with-green-trees campus with many eyes turned to them. We went to a place where I first came to that campus to join a warming up for Asian championship but in the end couldn’t say anything in front of great people and a grandmaster who invited me to join. Then another person came, a person who once said to me, “You're one of the few people that I dont gauge at first sight”. Then I had my first experience with British Parliamentary system at MekTan (many more people I met), left my best buddy for a while (I still joined an English Course that time), came back at 7 p.m. to watch my best-buddy and my best other teammate presenting their arguments at a place called Oktagon. Went back home at 10 p.m.

Hft, that’s right, memories are becoming an irritating happiness for me right now.

These days, one year ago. November, December 2007. Moving on to January, February, March, April, May, June 2008. After June 2008 I somehow felt that everything changed. And now it completely has.

It doesn’t have any good to keep thinking about everything in the past that won’t come back. But I have a very big difficulty to do that. Just how can I forget them? They were the people who taught me everything: taught me to grow up, taught me not to cry, taught me not to be a spoiled child, taught me about elaboration, taught me how to make a structurized speech, taught me to become a more experienced player in the harsh world I did enter; people who did karaoke with me, people who went to Pizza Hut, people who liked Ayam Penyet, people who welcomed me and my best buddy with all of our childishness, but they were willing to take us up to a higher level, people who trained and sparred with us, people who gave me motivation whenever I felt that I wasn’t worth to be a debater, people whom I love and respect so much.

If you think I’m making everything hyperbolic, you’re wrong.

I treasure everything that has been said and done between me and them. There’s just too much that time cannot erase. I don’t know whether I’ll join them as an ‘insider’ when the time comes that I am a student of that institute (amin!), cause everything is not as what I expect, as for now.

Well, now what I have to do is moving on, with my greatest effort to leave the greatest experience of my life behind. The people in this blog-post, maybe you don’t know how much I love you all. Although one of you told me, “We love you two (me and my best buddy). If we don’t, why would we do everything we’ve done?”. But now he’s changed either, right? His promises of “You can always come to me if you feel like it” has been proven as wrong. Everything good was in the past.

Thank you people, for everything you’ve done to me. For teaching me to be a strong and grown up kid. I don’t know how more I can be thankful to you. Those bloodshed dramas finally fruit. And I believe someday I will find some other people like you, some other people who play an important part in my life like what you used to do, some other people who will make me feel that my life is something worth living.

-MFR-

November 2008, In the morning light.